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An anonymous reader wrote in with the good news that after 5 days of blackout, "Egypt is coming back on-line. Some sites that didn't used to be available and are now back include two telcos: Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat Egypt. Guess that we can't have those IPv4 addresses back after all then."

Well, you would be falling... likely not flying. So yes, if falling excites you, then run with it... no need to worry about the inevitable, it will be quick and rather painless anyways.

Assuming the building, or the height at which you began falling is tall enough that it would kill you... if you are sort of falling/stumbling down the side of a pyramid, it would probably be a good idea to attempt to prevent yourself from falling further, since there's the possibility you will live, but not be happy that you

An orderly transitional government, to setup fair and open elections, would likely lead to more debate of the issues, and a government reflecting the people, which are mixed, secular and religious. If it turns messy and confrontational, more emotional and less rational, radical groups get better chances, be they right, left, military, religious, corporate or whatever.

America is not a western liberal democracy. It is western, absolutely not liberal, and a democracy in name only. The following statements are true:

The Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East seek to establish a global caliphate, convert or execute all infidels, overthrow reason and science, rescind the last thousand years of social and ethical progress, and have all people submit to the absolute authority of a few wealthy imam.

The Christian fundamentalists in the US seek to establish a global church, con

"The Christian fundamentalists in the US seek to establish a global church, convert or execute all heathens, overthrow reason and science, rescind the last thousand years of social and ethical progress, and have all people submit to the absolute authority of a few wealthy preachers."

Wow..mind telling me which church you went to that actually spouted this kind of dogma?

I mean, sure, they do like to convert people, but I've never seen or heard of a christian church that wanted to do everything you said. On

I grew up in a christian fundamentalist church. And that is what they preached (except the wealthy part, the guy who got 10% of several hundred peoples income kept that on the down low). This is far, far more common than you think. A lot of these groups don't preach the hardcore stuff publicly or use euphemisms and innuendo to set a tone without explicitly calling for the inquisition to start burning heretics at the stake. But its there, you just have to know what to look for.

the guy who got 10% of several hundred peoples income kept that on the down low

Probably less than 1% unless your church met in alleys or parks and had no charitable giving programs. There are a lot of legitimate expenditures whenever you get a lot of people together on a regular basis on land that their group owns, to sing songs that they probably have to pay performance licensing fees for.
Also, Jesus didn't teach "Death to the Pharasees!" or "Death to the Pagans!". The closest he got was telling his followers to buy swords before he was crucified (a caution that they'll need to de

the guy who got 10% of several hundred peoples income kept that on the down low

Probably less than 1% unless your church met in alleys or parks and had no charitable giving programs. There are a lot of legitimate expenditures whenever you get a lot of people together on a regular basis on land that their group owns, to sing songs that they probably have to pay performance licensing fees for.

Also, Jesus didn't teach "Death to the Pharasees!" or "Death to the Pagans!". The closest he got was telling his followers to buy swords before he was crucified (a caution that they'll need to defend themselves, not attack others).

its there, you just have to know what to look for.

It's not there at all, and my guess is you're reading your own beliefs into their comments.

I am not talking about what Jesus taught. I am talking about what christian fundamentalists teach. I was an insider, I was one of them. I know first hand how evil, corrupt and two faced they are. If you are a "compassionate christian" you likely have no idea what is happening on the other side of your faith, both through inexperience and willful ignorance.

It is hard to tell if Jesus was a good hearted crazy guy who thought he was the son of god, or if he was a manipulator pushing his political agenda (howev

I am not talking about what Jesus taught. I am talking about what christian fundamentalists teach. I was an insider, I was one of them. I know first hand how evil, corrupt and two faced they are. If you are a "compassionate christian" you likely have no idea what is happening on the other side of your faith, both through inexperience and willful ignorance.

I am a Christian fundamentalist. The point of fundamentalism is getting back to the fundamentals of Christianity, i.e. what Jesus taught. Fundamentalist churches are a lot more extreme in their forgiveness, charity, and outreach than more established churches. They're also less structured, so you can end up with a church hiring the wrong preacher more often (maybe what happened at your church).

How is what I am saying "hate filled retoric"? It isn't hate filled rhetoric to call an evil, corrupt and two faced person/group/system evil corrupt and two faced. It is called being honest. I have not said one hateful thing, not made one personal attack.

And what is this "other team" am I batting for? Rationality? Awareness? Freedom? Justice? Good? DAMN RIGHT I AM.

I have an ethical responsibility to speak out against irrationality, evil, corruption, deception and hate when I see it. I may not be able to def

Any large enough group of people will have politics, cliques, mob mentality and an us versus them attitude towards outsiders. These attitudes are by no means the exclusive property of religious groups.

As an Atheist living in one of the most right-wing Bible thumping states in the US, I have not been cast out or stoned or burned at the stake for my heresy lately, so I still feel pretty safe (at least in that sense) living here. I am not sure it would be the same if I chose to move to one of the more fundamentalist parts of the Middle East.

Opinions may vary, but at least from what I understand, the idea of separation of church and state holds a little stron

Funny - I hear religious people say the same thing. "If things keep going the way they are..."

Maybe your both, i don't know, a little paranoid? Yes there's people that want to join the church and state again. There's also people that want to ban allowing all religions. And there's a third group that believes that jam will evolve into a higher life form and wipe us all out.

Stop living in fear of the boogyman and get on with your life already. Yesh.

Egyptians are probably going to get what they want, or at least what they want at the instant of transition. That doesn't mean it won't be bad for us, them, and the rest of the world as well. I haven't read up on the Iranian revolution, but superficially the protests in Egypt seem similar- they're not really about anything, except the removal of Mubarak; a large proportion of the population is Muslim; and there's no obvious candidate to fill the leadership vacuum.
It's easy to imagine Egypt voting for a new

Only so long as they want a democratic form of governance. Statistically speaking, there is a very clear causation that democracy translates to peace and prosperity with the likelihood of war being dramatically reduced - especially with another democratic government.

So basically, factually, statistically speaking, its better for the Egyptian people and the rest of the world if they have some form of a democratic government. Period.

And as the middle east's long history proves, any other form of government i

Why would a muslim-based one be worse than the current dictator based one or our christian-based one? The muslims in Egypt are very moderate compared to others in that region. The whole muslim world wants to be more moderate, that's one of the reason you see the young uprising in those regions that and it's unemployment and poverty rates since you could say extremism and poverty seems to be closely linked. The current favorite if Egypt will have it's government prematurely ended is a liberal muslim a lot li

An Islamic government abdicates all authority to Islamic religious leaders. Leaders (and followers) who believe that their words are the words of god and are therefore absolute law. When you have a tiny cabal of wealthy religious people making all decisions for a nation because it is the will of their god, you don't have a real democracy even if voting is allowed because the only opinions that matter are those of the religious leaders.

but for some reason, I suspect it will be a muslim-based one. in which case, we are now WORSE off.

Assuming your not Egyptian; who cares if WE are worse off? Its their country, they should be able to pick their own damn government, no matter how much we dislike it. Our government is, in a way, a Christian based one, something about 90% of our population being Christian. Much of the world would probably doesn't like this.

Reading about this revolution, and the parties involved, no one comes off as a Muslim

I suspect it will be a muslim-based one. in which case, we are now WORSE off.

We will be worse off? I am sorry to burst your bubble but it is not about us, it is about the Egyptians. We (I assume you are from the US) were doing fine before this all happened, Egyptians were getting tortured and murdered by the police on a routine basis, not to mention living in poverty for the most part. I don't think they care what it means for us, and I don't blame them for not caring. It was the US that supported the current government so they will probably be glad that the end of torture and murde

Al Jazeera media network is by far the best coverage, but unfortunately it is more or less censored in the US [thenation.com] apart from the above live stream (Censored in the same way that Paypal/Visa/MCard "censored" wikileaks, that is).

Although, comically, I turned in and lost my satellite feed - switched to another channel and it's back. Switched back to Al Jazeera and it's gone again. Hmm. Time to reboot the decoder box.

Ok. I lied. I'm meant to have Al Jazeera but its coming through so slow and fragmented that it's unwatchable. Its headline banner is "The battle for Egypt. Fresh clashes at Liberation Square" but I get that as a still picture (with the square in the

But he was a Newspaper man. Had he lived in today's world, he would have been publishing Blogs and News articles online, and objected to the concept that he is not allowed to do so. Internet == freedom of the press. And speech.

No government has a right to stick a muzzle in your mouth & prevent you from exercising your Nature-given right to express yourself (or share the thoughts running through your brain).

You think Franklin would be In Favor of shutting-down the internet, having women's breasts & men's penises fondled at airports, and other anti-freedom measures that make people feel like Slaves instead of free human beings?

If so, you know nothing of the man.All it requires is some READING (old concept but still valid) to realize where Franklin stood on these issues - "Anybody who would give us *essential* liberty for *temporary* security, deserve neither." He was also the one who went to Britain to bro

Multiple passengers have been fondled, with the Brownshirt SA sticking their hands down men's pants or up women's blouses. One woman, who is filing a lawsuit, had her breast exposed and groped. Later an SA agent commented, "You have nice ones - wish I had been the one touching you."

Why are people so foolish that they think they don't have the right to free speech? (Or travel, or privacy in their homes, et cetera.)

People do have a right to free speech (I'm assuming you were going towards US constitutional rights). However, they may not have a right to using the medium. Things don't construct and maintain themselves magically. You need manpower, which converts to money, to do it. If you want the Internet, you A) pay a private company for your usage of the medium, or B) pay a public company (aka government) to give access to the Internet.

Access to the internet and other forms of communication are one of our arms we have in defense of our liberties. The internet should therefore fall under the protection of the 2nd Amendment. Resist the kill-switch!

Actually the internet falls under Amendment 10: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution..... are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words neither the Union Congress, the President, nor the Supreme Court were ever delegated the power to turn-off the internet.

That power is reserved to the Member States in perpetuity, until such time as they amend the Constitution to give that power to the central government. Which has not happened.

The power to turn-off the net remains in the hands of your Local Legislature, which is where it should be - close to the people. (My legislator lives on the same street as me - if he ever turned off my internet, I and my neighbors would probably toilet paper the house.)

Internet. Look it up. Does it say "Network of computers with the sole and express purpose of facilitating commerce?"

If the Commerce clause gives the federal government the right to regulate commerce on the Internet (which I think is obvious), then fine, but it does not grant the government the right to turn the whole damn thing off under the guise of "regulating commerce" because commerce is not the only thing which happens on the Internet.

Many of the things that Congress does fall under Amendment 10. Unfortunately they've used the Interstate Commerce Clause to short-circuit the 10th and somehow they got the Supreme Court to go along with it.

Here's a fun thought exercise. With the Constitution in mind think about specific things that the Federal Government does, either through agencies or law making.

Now try and find justification for those things according to a black letter reading of the Constitution.

True dat. High school social studies: pretty much everything congress does, they do through the ICC. That is, or course, as long as that thing crosses state lines, which seems fair to me. I'm pretty for federalism, myself.

"INTRAstate commerce" aka Commerce INSIDE the states. It is reserved, by amendment 10, to the Member State Legislatures/parliaments. The Union government has no business to interfere with local businesses that only transfer money from in-state customers.

I understand that state governments and lower have the right develop their own kill switches for their portion of the internet.

However, I don't think any government should have the power to turn off their section of the internet. Can you imagine the chaos if state governments had kill switches and used them during perceived emergencies?

Besides, if this happened in the United States, before you blinked an eye most of the major internet providers would be down due to "national security". The infrastructure is very fragile in the US, as the 'net is mostly corporate run and with a little phone calling and martial law put into effect, you'd see no packets. Cell phone transmissions would be severed as well, or at least governed.The constitution is not a shield in that "worst case" scenario of a civil uprising,

Access to the internet and other forms of communication are one of our arms we have in defense of our liberties. The internet should therefore fall under the protection of the 2nd Amendment. Resist the kill-switch!

Oh, those Americans and their explosive solutions! I keep thinking of the old publication from pirate radio folks called "Radio Is My Bomb [roguecom.com]". The more nefarious sort of governments might make case that the Internet is exactly like unregulated radio broadcasting (normal people who are talking about stuff that might offend some other people, while playing some music with naughty words and luscious rhythms!), and as such it's not governed by laws guaranteeing free ownership of guns, but rather the laws guarante

Well, i agree with the fact that Egypt isn't a state, however the constitution of the united states says nowhere, "gun".It says 'arms', which means anything that can protect with offensive force as well as defensive.

It doesn't take much of a conspiracy theorist to see what's probably happening here: first make a speech to the people talking a lot about stability and warning of chaos, then bring the net back up, send in paid thugs - confirmed as poiice in plain clothes - to attack the protesters, letting the world see the 'chaos the protests have caused'
Mubarack: certified asshole, but a smart one.

I imagine that Egypt's ISPs tried cutting over to IPv6-only infrastructure. This is all just a coincidence, nothing to do with the protests. I'm glad they've rolled back to IPv4 though, we can't be depriving people of access to Twitter and Facebook.

Internet is back up after Mubarak knew his deceiving speech will create a divide among the youth. No they'll give them the internet back to fight and spread fear. A massacre is currently taking place in egypt and bullets are being fired and the army has withdrawn its troops to allow the secret police to attack the few that will stand their ground. Democracy lost and the whole world is watching its slow death.

they only brought back the internet to make people go home
without internet,more people joined the protests because they had nothing better to do anyway
now,people are urging others to join the protests via social networking sites
I don't think the Egyptian government can do anything about these protests really,other than stepping down,that is

I went to school with a few Egyptians and they were constantly telling me that they wanted a Democracy. Unfortunately, the US government, my Government, was giving that asshole Mubarak billions of dollars a year in "aid" so that we could have an Arab "friend" in the region - of course pissing off the Arab peoples and giving them yet more reasons to hate me and my country (justified).

I really hope you and your people get what you wish for and I really really hope my Government doesn't fuck things up for you folks.

Yes, these protests are absolutely incredible. And from those Americans who have a clue what's actually going on in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, etc, you're seeing a lot of support for the protesters. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans don't have a clue what's actually going on, and many that do are getting nothing but misinformation about who the protesters are and what they want.

There are a few major reasons for that:1. For far too many Americans, "Arab", "Muslim", "terrorist", and "scary guy" are basically in

They got cut off, then they got systematically removed from mailing lists?

I don't think it's a conspiracy. They've probably just been automatically removed by the mailing list's bounce handler. They were down for long enough for most SMTP servers to give up and do a return to sender which causes most mailer software to remove you.

Now that this finally happened, I think it's time we give them a helping hand: the least that we, the/. crowd, can do is donate some bandwidth to the Tor network by adding relay/bridge nodes and for those who can afford it exit nodes, too. This way we offer them a safer way to communicate among themselves and with the rest of the world.

For those yet unfamiliar with Tor, you can find out more here: Tor Project [torproject.org]

Their 'president' of 29 years stepped down & now they get their Internet back? On the surface at least it looks like a victory for the lower classes, but I can't imagine that happening in this day and age. Maybe the businesses were just losing too much money on not having internet.

The UK would be very interesting. You would be facing the GCHQ/NSA (US bases) at home. Would they suggest net/web 2.0 stays up to track everybody in realtime and offer locations of interest to ~Forward Intelligence Teams (FITs).Find and "remove" the leaders and the lone-wolf types who suddenly become very active.
The "phone network" is the GCHQ so your data call to an ISP outside the UK would just add another number to be tracked back to you and then blocked/recoreded.
Public phones, mobile phones may onl

One site that stayed up through all this was the Library of Alexandria [bibalex.org], which, among other things, hosts a copy of the Internet Archive. They now have photos up of their supporters surrounding the Library to protect it.

They stayed up because they have a direct connection to the 10Gb/s FLAG [wikipedia.org], the Fiber Optic Around the Globe link. That has a cable landing at Alexandria, and the Library is tied in there, without going through a local ISP.

Anyone else having trouble reaching english.aljazeera.net in the U.S.? It stopped coming up for me yesterday, and is going on 24 hours since I've been able to access it. I don't see anything in the news about why it might be down. Just wondering if anyone else is having problems.

Yes, it is "unofficially" censored in the US [thenation.com] - that is, censored due to political pressure in the same way that Paypal/Amazon/Visa/Mastercard/BOA were "encouraged" by the administration to censor Wikileaks. At least they have not bombed their offices (yet) as Bush Jr wanted [thenation.com].

See this very recent coverage [youtube.com] of the effective US cable and satellite carriers blackout of Al Jazeera, apart from "a handful of homes in the United States". (Your obviously one of the lucky few - care to name who your provider is?)

Historically this blackout has been due to pressure from the US Government on cable providers. From Washington Embraces Al Jazeera [thenation.com] linked earlier:

"On April 11 senior [US] military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, “The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.” On April 15 Donald Rumsfeld echoed those remarks in distinctly undiplomatic terms, calling Al Jazeera’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable. It’s disgraceful what that station is doing.” It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. “He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere,” a source told the Mirror. “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do"